Monthly Archives:January 2017

Post navigation

A business and gastric lesson in less is more

During a recent visit to Ft. Worth, our family celebrated a birthday with some good friends at the legendary Babe’s in Roanoke. The goal was to get, as our friends called it, “chicken-wasted,” and there’s no better place to do that than Babe’s.

There are no menus at Babe’s because there is only one decision to make – fried chicken or chicken-fried steak. That’s it. No lunch menu and separate dinner menu. No senior’s menu. There’s no diet page and no chef’s specials. Fried chicken or chicken-fried steak. That’s all you need to know.

Everything is served family-style. They bring out a big bowl of salad and a plate piled high with biscuits to start. You can have some or not, they’re bringing it out either way. If you eat it all, they’ll keep refilling it. When the main course comes out, it’s also served family-style. Two in our party ordered chicken-fried steaks and they were stacked on top of all of the fried-chicken the rest of us (the smart ones) had ordered. They also bring out sides – mashed potatoes and corn in big bowls. If it’s not enough, don’t worry. They’ll keep refilling those as well.

January is the month for diets

If you are what you eat, then what do you spend most of your day consuming? Rich, nutritious meals like good books, educational courses, and the lessons of history? Or are you loading up on today’s 24/7 junk food options of reality tv, idle celebrity gossip, and fear-mongering talking heads?

One of those choices will pay dividends for years to come while the other will go straight through you like washing down an entire box of Twinkies with a 2-liter bottle of Dr Pepper.

A lesson learned from La La Land

The bride and I enjoyed a date night last Saturday and went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see La La Land. I’m a big fan of classic musicals, so the bride had a good feeling this movie would be right up my alley. She wasn’t wrong.

There were a number of things about this moving that I found amazing. All of the instrumental numbers. The way they gave every scene the space to breathe. The fact that this movie was made at all! Ryan Gosling’s unfathomable piano skills (he learned to play specifically for this movie and in doing so proved Tim Ferriss right).

La La Land also reminded me of something that has been a guiding principle for me for over 20 years now, but [SPOILER ALERT] it’s something that the main characters in the film got wrong.

“Think about what [Kirk] Hammett could have done – what we might have done in his position were we to suddenly find ourselves a rock star, or soon-to-be-rock star in our chosen field. The temptation is to think: I’ve made it. I’ve arrived. They tossed the other guy because he’s not as good as I am. They chose me because I have what it takes. Had he done that, we’d probably have never heard of him or the band. There are, after all, plenty of forgotten metal groups from the 1980s.”

My favorite book of 2016

In 2016, for the first time ever, I kept track of every book I read for the entire year. Twenty-six in all, or an average of one every two weeks. Which used to seem like a lot to me until I compared myself to prolific readers like, Winston Churchill, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ryan Holiday. But not to compare myself is something that was reinforced for me this year from the one person in that list that you may have never heard of before. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We hear all the time that quality is more important than quantity (though I would certainly argue that when it comes to reading the latter inherently helps with the former), and by that measure 2016 was the most impactful year of reading for my life in more than a decade.

Archives

Connect with Me

Michael W. Devers

I’ve been threatened by Garth Brooks, warned not to touch Shania Twain, broken into a bowling alley with the Dixie Chicks, told by Vince Gill that he hoped I choked on my food, and spent a very scary night in a hotel room with David Allan Coe....